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Cardinal Mahony Should Stand Trial
Cardinal Mahony Should Stand Trial
– January 24, 2013
“This week’s revelations of deliberate efforts by [Los Angeles Cardinal] Mahony and others to shield abusers from law enforcement authorities are deplorable yet entirely unsurprising. It all fits the M.O. that’s was in place at least through the 1980s:
“Conceal the church’s dirty secrets at all costs. Don’t notify the police when abuse is reported. Keep prosecutors at bay with legal challenges. Avoid reforms until public pressure mounts. And, when all else fails, have Mahony issue a carefully scripted ‘apology.’
“His latest was perhaps his most odious and offensive, with Mahony saying he didn’t fully appreciate the hell victims had been put through until many years later.
“You need years of reflection to realize that the rape, abuse, betrayal and psychological exploitation of children by their spiritual leaders is both devastating and unconscionable?”
This is how Steve Lopez, LA Times columnist, describes the outrage of the recently released documents in a current legal proceeding against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles by a victim of a priest.
SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, describes the relevance of these documents:
“Because of one survivor’s fight in the California Civil Courts against Father Nicolas Aguilar Rivera and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, never seen before documents containing vital evidence of how clergy abuse cases were handled by the Archdiocese are now available for public view.
Portions of the thousands of documents filed in this case are posted on the web site www.abusedinsocal.com. The documents, which were not a part of the documents involved in the 2007 settlements with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, demonstrate that former Archbishop and now Cardinal Roger Mahoney knew from his first days in office that priests under his supervision were sexually abusing children in Los Angeles.
The documents further demonstrate that contrary to Mahony’s past claims, he was intimately involved in handling the sex abuse scandal of priests in Los Angeles from 1985 to 2011 and communicated directly with priest perpetrators and their therapists–just as his predecessors McIntrye and Manning had done before him.
Also included in the documents is evidence that as Archbishop, Mahony worked with his Vicar for Clergy to thwart law enforcement involvement by ordering Pastors to not give Altar Boy lists to LAPD detectives, while at the same time, cozying up to high ranking officers at LAPD Juvenile Division.
And finally, even though Mahony and his Vicars for Clergy were aware of the crimes of the priests, the names of the children, and the names of the families; he did not call law enforcement or child protective services but offered counseling in order to keep his perceived enemies closer.
Mahony, the first native Angeleno to be created Cardinal, now holds the title of Archbishop Emeritus of Los Angeles.”
A local testimony of this horrible practice was shared by Matthew Carrigan, on July 2012
“…Words really can’t describe what you did to me. The abuse you subjected me to has ripped me apart. Here I stand at 39 years old still trying to heal and piece my life together. I can not ask why you did it, because you’d never be able to answer that question. I wouldn’t want to hear your sick and twisted spin on it like you gave your parishioners . I can not call you a man of god. You are nothing more than a demented monster. A monster that hides under a religious organization who protects you and allows you to continue abusing children even after you have been accused. You stole from me my childhood, my innocence, my trust, my sense of being, my security, my education, my self worth, my sanity. The list goes on and on…”
The Cardinal should stand trial, don’t you think so?
References:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0123-lopez-mahony-20130123,0,2185624.column
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2012/07/timothy_raemakers_corpus_christi.php
http://theworthyadversary.com/author/jcasteix
http://ianmasters.com/ January 22 interview of Joelle Casteix a spokesperson for SNAP, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests
rapevictimsofthecatholicchurch 